edge programmers vs other programmers

I am planning to buy a programmer soon and I have asked alot of people what ones are better for my truck, I have a 04 5.3L 4x4. Most people are telling me edge makes the best on the market but I want to ask on here best of the vast amount of knowledge of the people on this fourm. Also I have heard alot about "custom" tunes, is that where you have someone add to your programmer or are they calling have a programmer a custom tune?

I'm not an expert on the matter but I'll give my two cents on the matter.

The edge, Diablo sport, hypertech, etc are basic tuners that give you a basic upgrade over the factory program. They're easy but are fairly limited in what you get.

A custom tune is just that a tune specific for your vehicle, written either to a hand held tuner or directly to the pcm. They give you more options because it is done for exactly what you want. There are a few vendors on the forum who can do this usually for a good price.

You can find 06montess who tunes with the Diablo tuners or Jennabear who is with black bear performance. I have heard good things about both. I am looking to get black bear to tune my truck soon.

Hope this helps a little, I'm sure others can offer their input and share more information.

I have an Edge CST in my 04 Silverado 6.0, and I love it. I tow with this vehicle primarily, so I like the idea of being able to switch between the 4 levels of performance. The HP gain is minimal, but the transmission program is awesome. It will throw you back in the seat when it shifts at WOT, mainly I bought it for the large display of live time data while driving.

My other truck I have a custom tune on it, It's nice but there is no way to adjust it. Basically your stuck with what they give you, I paid $250 for the CST, and $349 with the custom tune.

I think that diablosport one that they sell on here does, I had my custom tune done by frost. I had to send him the PCM, and then wait for it to come back. My engine has internal upgrades as well, not just bolt ons. I had mine tuned for cam, stall, gears, etc.

Diablosport's InTune is a handheld tuner. By itself it'd be comparable to the Edge programmer in terms of functionality. However, with a Diablosport device you can ALSO engage a tuner like [MENTION=32828]06MonteSS[/MENTION] to develop a custom tune for your vehicle. Doing this involves logging during a drive so the person doing the work can analyze it and develop a tune specific to your vehicle. Afterward you receive a tune by email, load it to the device, and use the device to load it to the truck. Then you do another logged drive and provide the logs to the person doing the tuning so they can confirm all is as expected or, if there are still improvements to be made, do another tune.

The stock options provided by the tuner (without the custom tune) remain intact and functional -- but in general you'll want to stick with the custom tune, as all vehicles are slightly differerent and it's specific to YOUR vehicle -- meaning it's been built with your engine's needs in mind where the stock tunes on the device are generic and intended for compatability with many vehicles -- so the gains are typically lower compared to a stock tune.

The fee for a custom tune is modest ... and tends to pay for itself in fuel savings ... which are frequently better than with the device's options, alone. The benefit to Diablosport over, say, Blackbear is that you don't have to send physical things back/forth in the mail (or go visit the custom tuner for dyno work) -- meaning there's faster turnaround. Also, a good custom tuner like [MENTION=32828]06MonteSS[/MENTION] has worked with people of all technical levels and can walk you through what you need to do if you're not technically inclined -- so that shouldn't be a worry.

yeah, the diablo tools have the most end-user adjustable parameters available than any others... more complete/full parameter data logging compared to others... PLUS you can get custom tuning done for them, which you can not with the others - you'd be stuck with whatever tunes they gave you on the tool...